the city should challenge the legality of the proposed ordinance before putting it on the ballot, assuming they collect enough signatures. also, as someone noted they could just refuse to put it on the ballot (but they would get sued).

it's worth noting that former councilman dan cofran is almost certainly helping with this.

deadline has passed for april, so the earliest we'd see this on a ballot is august... presumably after sly coasts into a second term with a mandate of the entire city (except maybe the northland).

it has major first amendment problems. they can deny it and have a federal case having nothing to do with rail

it would cover 100% of employees including people in unrelated departments and potentially even people with contracts with the city. someone working in the 311 call center answering phones couldn't exercise their right to sign a petition initiative for a TDD if it caused the need to study rail under this ordinance

we already know from the Chastain case that bad petitions signed by residents should go on the ballot, that the petition initiative process is too important. Didn't the Sue Burke lawsuit cover constitutionality and TDD petitions as well?

a city ordinance can't try to overrule state law, it especially can't try to overrule the US constitution on matters of free speech.

it's a weird decision of ordinance, but they used ordinance 140581 to help define the current project as being a new system. the only place it refers to the project scope is in the non-official discussion noteshttp://cityclerk.kcmo.org/liveweb/Docum ... 2fa0H6oBtc

then it goes and bans preparing and constructing any new system.
and I can see how they think that could mean that any task not yet started it covered

so it's all based on if that ordinance says something that in any way connects to a legal definition of the project.

it's a stretch but I can see how their argument is supposed to work. I don't think they managed to do any of that, just how they tried to

i would bet a judge would rule that it actually means it says there's two possible uses, not that both must happen at the same time for the law to apply. that it means fixed rail means passenger and fixed rail means freight. Not that it means fixed rail means concurrent passenger and freight service only

It doesn't say that it is limited to exclusive combined service so you can't assume that's what it means

I don't know if any citizenry can completely outlaw by voter initiative the ability of their elected officials to explore, study, or discuss any form of mass transit, or transportion for that matter. It would seem to me that there would be some governing principle in law that voters couldn't completely outlaw some facet of government that city leaders traditionally do.

It's like when states pass laws that are found unconstitutional because they limit some greater right or duty codified in law already, or constitutionally.

If this is allowed, what would stop a group of us from doing some voter initiative that forced an ordinance on the City Council and mayor that they could spent no money studying and discussing the improvement of streets, or build no new streets in the City without voter approval? Or we forced an ordinance on the city to do away with transit buses carrying people or goods on city streets?

Another fun ordinance we could impose of our city government is that they could demolish no building in the city limits without voter approval. If anti-rail ordinance happens, I'm going gung-on my anti-building demolition ordinance.

I would think the proposed ordinance would stand a better chance if it limited future spending on any extension without voter approval. Wasn't the amount spent by the city on planning and engineering on the proposed lines around $1M? Money it hoped to recoup if the election was a success.

I could see that passing. It has a clear value to a voter that they can decide on if that's worth creating a larger government to implement.

this law tried to cover anything possible in a clever manner. Had they been far more straightforward they wouldn't have created loopholes. Since it all comes back to money that's an easy place to have control. Allow TDDs or the city must used a pre-approved source of funding. Simple, to the point, easy to validate. And because voters already should have control over taxes in Missouri people would like the idea.

Something more like

Shall the city amend *code* to disallow using general funds or unapproved specific funding sources not yet voted on to be spent for any purpose towards planning or constructing fixed rail public transportation. This shall not disallow the city to spend money to prepare for the election as required by whatever law